And first, do you hear in the distance that strange chant which is not wanting in melody and charm, when it rises afar in the air, like the plaint of love? That little cry, flute-like, short, monotonous, repeated several times in succession, at brief intervals, varies in such a manner, that one seems to hear it retire and approach on one side or another, like the sound of a trumpet by which the motions of a flag are directed. The greater part of the time one can not determine whence proceeds this strange music, often attributed to some bird, and without our being willing to acknowledge the obscure and unknown singer who produces it. It is the announcement of the betrothal—it is the love-song of the Batrachian.
Never was love more sincere, or more devoted. When once the toad has pledged his faith to a spouse, not only does he exhibit toward her a romantic fidelity, but he, moreover, protects her at the peril, and often even at the sacrifice of his life. If any one attacks a female, the male rushes in front of the aggressor, provokes him swells himself out in sign of defiance, and endeavors to irritate him, in order to give his companion time to fly, and take refuge in a safe asylum.
If, on the other hand, nothing disturbs him, he quits not his spouse for a moment; he surrounds her with anxious and tender attentions, lays before her the most delicate morsels of the prey he hunts for her, only eats after she has finished, and altogether acts in a manner, that might make many a Parisian husband blush. Further, he is fiery, jealous; he permits no rival to approach her to whom he is united. Woe to the audacious one who would seek to win her affection! almost invariably he pays with his life for his impudent endeavors.
This model husband, when he becomes a father has no less tenderness for his children than for their mother. When the hour, dear to the ancient Lucina, arrives, it is he who performs for his companion, the tender duties of the occasion; he takes the eggs in his arms, and places them along the body of the female, to which they remain attached till the period of hatching.
At this epoch alone, the female approaches the water, in it she deposits her eggs, and therein the eggs undergo the different transformations peculiar to the Batrachians. Then the double mission of father and mother is ended.
You see, that in writing an eulogium on the toad, and in seeking to re-install him in public favor, we have not been utopian.
Besides, the toad is a very sociable animal, and readily becomes the companion and the friend of man. Often, he establishes his dwelling in our houses. Pennant relates the history of a toad, who took up his abode under a staircase, and who, every evening as soon as he saw the lights, came into the dining-room. He suffered himself to be taken up and placed on the table, where they fed him with worms, flies, and wood-lice. He took these insects delicately, inflated himself to express his gratitude, and knew very well how to ask them to put him on the table, when they pretended not to be willing to do so. This toad lived thirty-six years, and then was the victim of an accident.
II.
Another being, no less contemptuously regarded than the toad, is the spider; and yet the study of the spider's habits, would render him, who gave himself up to it, witness of fantastic and tragic dramas, often of a nature to throw into the shade all that our gloomiest melodramatists invent, even of the most sinister and most affecting kind.
One day, a spider fell into a large glass vase, forgotten for a long time in a library. How, and by what course of peripatetics this accident happened, I know not. I can only tell you, that it was a large domestic spider, with an enormous oval abdomen, and its back of a blackish color, on which were marked two longitudinal lines of yellow spots. The animal caught in this transparent snare, as a wolf in a pitfall, set to work, running round the bottom of the vase, with all the speed his eight legs could achieve.